Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Discover Financial, as well as industry counterparts FIS, Fiserv and Global Payments, have formed the Payments Leadership Council to represent their position to the government and in the media on a range of issues. Card payments are in the spotlight currently.

A recent paper, ‘COVID Cash*’, by Kenneth Rogoff and Jessica Scazzero considers the implications for advanced economies in the long-term trend of value being stored in cash, a trend accelerated by, and highly visible due to, the pandemic. They make two arguments.

The Bank of Canada conducted studies into cash usage in April and July 2020*. This March it updated its staff discussion paper 2021-23 reflecting on these surveys and what they tell us about cash as pandemic containment measures lift.

Wales, with a population 3.15 million, along with England 56.3 million, Scotland 5.46 million and Northern Ireland 1.89 million make up UK’s total population of 66.8 million. Although all countries in the Union are governed by the UK government based in Westminster in London, Wales along with Scotland and Northern Ireland each has a devolved Parliament with limited powers.

Alper Sayin, Director Cash Planning and Operations at Garanti BBVA, has summarised the key cash and payment trends facing Turkey in 2021. Cash is increasing but cost control remains high on the agenda, with new cash processing tools being used and an ATM pooling initiative being closely monitored.

The number of central banks announcing work on Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) continues to rise. This month there have been reports about CBDC activity by the central banks of the ECCB, Jamaica, Korea and Russia.

Google Pay is changing. The existing Google Pay will shut down in the US on 5 April and a new app has to be downloaded if you want to continue paying with Google on your phone.

At the online Future of Cash conference last month, Diederik Bruggink from the European Payment Council (EPC) presented its thoughts on how to make cash more efficient.

With the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank announcing the world’s first CBDC based on blockchain technology, the CBDC activity level around the world continues to grow.

Gerhard Rösel and Franz Seitz have published a paper, ‘Cash and Crises: No Surprises by the Virus’, as a working paper for the Institute for Monetary and Financial Stability. This paper looks at cash usage across a number of key economies since the 1990s. It notes the trend towards cash being hoarded as a store of value, reflected an increasing proportion of cash in circulation being high value notes, but looks, in particular, at what happens to cash when there is crisis.

RBR’s most recent study, ‘ATM Software 2021’, looks at the latest ATM developments across the world.

In 2016 Diebold and Wincor Nixdorf joined forces to form Diebold Nixdorf, creating a company with global reach in the self-service market. Diebold Nixdorf serves retailers and retail banks providing ATM and point of sale (POS) technology and software to run and integrate the technology and behind the scenes payment platforms. It also offers management services for all these products.

Relative to its population, India has few ATMs – 22 per 100,000 people, according to the World Bank, compared with 81 in China. It also has one of the lowest ratios of ATM cash withdrawals relative to cash in circulation, according to a June 2019 RBI report, 'Benchmarking India's Payment Systems'.

The CBDC Conference, 3-5 October 2021, will go ahead in Frankfurt, although the organiser is remaining flexible to put it online if need be. Registration comes with a ‘COVID-19 guarantee’ so that people can be confident about committing to the event.

The last year has accelerated a number of payment trends, with the cash ‘paradox’ to the fore (cash in circulation up, cash transactions down). The Future of Cash conference laid out and explained the growing pressure on cash but also gave good data, examples and food for thought about opportunities for the future.

In October 2020 the Federal Reserve’s national Cash Product Office (CPO), with the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta and Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, conducted the annual Diary of Consumer Payment Choice survey.

In IMF Working Paper 2020 255, entitled ‘Dirty Money: Does the Risk of Infectious Disease Lower Demand for Cash?’, its author Serhan Cevik – a senior economist with the IMF – looked at data from 133 countries between 1995 and 2017 to understand how people react to a rise in infectious diseases. Against his initial study he then ran a further five subsets of data to test his findings. After controlling for macroeconomic, financial and technological factors, the data was clear that a rise in infectious disease reduces the demand for physical cash.

The European Central Bank (ECB) study, 'Foreign Demand for Euro Banknotes', set out to identify the demand drivers for euro banknotes and to estimate the share of euro banknotes in circulation outside of the euro area.

Digital currency covers more than Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), it extends to all the digital solutions from Bitcoin to Diem. Digital currencies store balances in anonymous electronic addresses.

Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) are much talked about. The IMF has published a detailed paper – ‘Legal Aspects of Central Bank Digital Currency: Central Bank and Monetary Law Considerations’ – which explains the legal position of CBDCs and has investigated the position of 171 IMF members to see which are currently able to issue a CBDC. The paper will help central banks think through this element of their CBDC preparations.